Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection

Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection

Penn State researchers assessed the effects of changing climate conditions on agriculture, tourism, infrastructure, water resources, forestry, energy and human health in the 2015 Pennsylvania Climate Impact Assessment Update. Researchers also made recommendations to help Pennsylvanians prepare and respond.

The only hydrogen fueling station currently located in Pennsylvania is on Penn State's University Park campus where efforts are also underway to develop a mixed vehicle fleet, including two cars, a bus and vans, to demonstrate the potential of the new "gas."

The Combustion Lab where Jim Szybist works is, for all intents and purposes, a garage for gearheads: music blaring on the radio, smell of diesel in the air, overflowing tool boxes, and engines lying in various states of disrepair. But if you pay attention, you'll see computers silently chewing on data and detailed lab notebooks spread open on countertops, and you'll hear the buzz of graduate students—men and women—discussing their engine and fuel-related research.

Locals call the 400-acre plot of scarred land just south of Hazelton, Pennsylvania, the "Big Gorilla." Piles of leftover coal hulk over the brown earth. A 90-foot-deep pit filled with acidic water covers almost 17 acres. Hundreds of feet below the pool, abandoned tunnels snake along a coal seam. Acid mine drainage flows into the nearby Little Schuylkill River.